UNIFIED HISTORY TEXTBOOK
In January 2014, the discussion of a new educational and methodological complex of Russian history ended in Russia, and the director of the Institute of General History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Alexander Chubaryan, received instructions from V. Putin to introduce the textbook into the education system.
Considering that this textbook was offered as a kind of model for the CIS countries (some Belarusian historians spoke about this on the TRO channel), it is curious to see what kind of story they are going to teach schoolchildren using it.
Perhaps the most controversial is the judgment: "The USSR entered the Second World War on June 22, 1941". In fact, the USSR entered the war on September 17, 1939. Then he kept tens of thousands of Polish soldiers in camps, whom he officially called "prisoners of war" in documents, which means that the war of the USSR against Poland was still in 1939 (otherwise, the shooting of Poles in Katyn should be called genocide, not a war crime against prisoners of war against foreign citizens).
And if this textbook is offered for Belarus as well, then here is a generally discouraging question: when did Belarus enter the Second World War? Belarusians massively participated in the war, fighting in the advanced units of the Polish army, heroically defended the Brest Fortress and Kobrin from the Germans - even before the USSR entered the war. Western Belarus was part of the Second Rzecz Pospolita, and Western Belarusians were its citizens - therefore, it is correct to believe that Belarus entered the war from its first day, becoming a victim of Nazi aggression.
In general, there are many questions to the authors of a single textbook.
DISCONNECTIONS
Promotional video:
In the textbook: "Western and southern Russian lands during the second half of the 13th - early 15th centuries became part of state formations of different ethnic origin - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland."
Generally speaking, the full name of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Russia. How can it be "different ethnic" for Russians, if it is called RUSSIAN ??? And how can it be “different ethnic” for Belarusians, if they were then called Litvin?
The Belarusian lands have never been part of the Kingdom of Poland (as well as into the Zhemoytsky principality - the present Republic of Lietuva). And the Rusyn (Ukrainian) lands became part of Poland not in the 13th-15th centuries, as the textbook fantasizes, but only in 1569 - voluntarily, during the creation of a UNION STATE, similar to the USSR. Moreover, this state Rzeczpospolita itself was created as a response to the 17-year occupation of Polotsk by the troops of Ivan the Terrible.
In the textbook: “In North-Eastern Russia, after the establishment of dependence on the Horde, the process of unification of the Russian lands began. Gradually, its center was the Moscow principality that emerged in the second half of the XIII century, whose princes by the end of the XIV century, after a long struggle, secured the great reign of Vladimir - the main thing in North-Eastern Russia, and with it - the right to be called “the great princes of all Russia”.
Cheerful business! For Belarusians, the ON was supposedly "different ethnic", and the Horde was not "ethnic" for the Russians! There is not a word in the textbook that Moscow has risen as a collector of tribute from Russia for the Tatars (leaving itself half of the tribute "for labors").
Further: “In the 15th century, the political map of Eastern Europe looked very different than before the Mongol invasion. Instead of more than a dozen lands, it was dominated by two large states - the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (which included a significant part of Russian, East Slavic territories) and the Grand Duchy of Moscow. They fought among themselves for supremacy in the conditions of the gradual weakening and subsequent disintegration of the Horde."
There was no "Moscow state" until the 1480s! The Moscow ulus of the Horde did not possess any attribute of statehood: it did not have its own army (the Muscovites served in the army of the Horde, participated in all its wars), nor its own power (princes were appointed in the Horde, receiving a label), nor their own laws (they lived according to the laws of the Horde), nor their own coin (the name of the king of the Horde was minted on the coins).
As for the GDL, it did not "include a significant part of the Russian, East Slavic territories" at all, but was the national state of its autochthons. Moreover, the indigenous population of Western and Central Belarus (historical Lithuania) was Slavicized only at the beginning of the 16th century, and by faith it was not Orthodox at all, but Catholic. However, later it became Protestant, but of course, there is not a word about this in the textbook either.
And what does the term "Russian territory" mean in general? Is it Russian or what?
Science does not know the concept of "Russian territory". But there is a clear definition of the ethnic Belarusian territory. And why on earth the ethnically Belarusian lands of Smolensk, Bryansk, Kursk, part of the Pskov region are now part of the Russian Federation - the textbook, of course, does not give an answer. For there is no explanation for this: the Russians simply seized these purely Belarusian territories from the Belarusians, and the Belarusians were transformed there into “Russians”, that is, into “Russians”.
Further: “The invasion of the territory of Russia by the Polish-Lithuanian troops. … the entry of the Polish-Lithuanian garrison into Moscow."
What a comfortable position for the authors of the textbook! When it suits them, they call our lands “Russian”, and when not, they call the regiments from Minsk, Vitebsk, Polotsk “Lithuanian detachments”. For them, in fact, Belarus and Ukraine are not subjects of history - until the moment when Muscovy "annexes" them.
By the way, there was not a single gemoyt (that is, "Lithuanian" in the current sense) in Moscow, and only a few Poles. The garrison in Moscow consisted mainly of Belarusians. But it’s embarrassing to tell the truth that it was not the abstract “Poles-Lithuanians” who were expelled from Moscow, but brotherly Belarusians and Ukrainian Cossacks. After all, then it will be necessary to explain why the Muscovites abandoned a single union state with allegedly "brothers of the Eastern Slavs" and, moreover, "Russians". And they preferred their beloved Tatar-Mongols to them, about whose "yoke" it was now decided not to speak …
In the textbook: “Russia's foreign policy in the 17th century. … Contacts with the Orthodox population of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: opposition to Polonization, the spread of Catholicism."
This is where the authors found the "Orthodox population" in the Rzeczpospolita? Old Believers who fled from Muscovy (6.5%)? Apart from them, there were no Orthodox Christians in GDL-Belarus: only Catholics (38%) and Uniates since 1596 (39%). Catholicism spread only among Protestants, the Pope forbade the Catholics of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to entice Uniates to them. As for Polonization, it is natural for the era of the birth of the political nation of the Commonwealth, and the Poles were equally influenced by our side - after all, we lived in a single state. But the textbook does not say about opposition to the Ordinization of Muscovy: presumably, the Ordinization is welcomed.
And it is not clear what is “bad” about polonization? After all, as previously written in the textbook, the Poles are Slavs who once migrated to the territory of Belarus and Ukraine, creating the “Old Russian nationality” and “Eastern Slavs”. So how can Poles be “bad”? They are "our ancestors" according to the concept of the textbook.
Further: "A series of military victories and major foreign policy successes leads to a significant expansion of Russian possessions, Russia has solved historical problems - it has collected almost all the heritage of Kievan Rus and received access to the Black Sea."
What is this - "the legacy of Kievan Rus"? What is it eaten with? Kiev is the capital of a foreign country. Why on earth does the Moscow state collect some kind of "legacy" of another state? Why doesn't Kiev collect its "legacy" by itself? And why not at the same time Moscow pick up the legacy of Cairo, Paris, Tokyo? But she also gathered the heritage of the Polish state together with the Finnish one.
The fact that in fact Russia has collected all the "legacy" of the Horde state is not a word in the textbook. And it seems that Kazakhstan with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were also once part of "Kievan Rus" and were inhabited by "Eastern Slavs" …
In the textbook: "1863 - 1864. - the uprising in Poland."
If the uprising allegedly took place “in Poland”, then why did the tsarist troops suppress it in Belarus, and the hanger Muravyov forbade the use of the word “Belarus” itself?
"1867 - Sale of Alaska to the United States of America."
Again, not true. To sell something, you must first have it. Alaska has never been part of Russia, but belonged to a Russian-American company, the shares of which were sold. And not the United States, but companies. Alaska became a US state only in 1959.
"Combat operations during the Soviet-Polish war."
Again, not true. There was no Soviet Union yet, there was the RSFSR, so the war should be called Russian. But against whom? Trotsky's army attacked the BNR, liquidated the sovereign Belarusian state with the power legally elected by the Belarusians, seized and annexed to the RSFSR the ethnically Belarusian territories of the Smolensk region, Gomel, Vitebsk, Mogilev regions and part of the Minsk region - where about three million Belarusians lived. She began to carry out ethnocide, closing Belarusian schools and Belarusian publications in the lands occupied by aggression, forbidding the Belarusians to consider themselves Belarusians. So what does Poland have to do with it? This is in its purest form a Russian-Belarusian war with the capture of Eastern Belarus into the RSFSR, that is, a purely aggressive war, with the goal of growing ethnically alien territory.
In 2012, the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Bashkortostan recognized the BNR as the Belarusian Statehood and the predecessor of the sovereign Republic of Belarus. It turns out that the Russian army, occupying the BNR in the course of an unprovoked aggression, committed a crime against the Belarusian people and their state. This, I emphasize, is the position of the official historical science of the Republic of Belarus. But even here the authors of the Russian textbook do not see us as the subject of history. They, you see, "fought with Poland." And for some reason they captured Gomel, Mogilev, Vitebsk, Polotsk - allegedly "from the Poles". Where are the Belarusians in this textbook? Again with a magnifying glass you can’t find, just microbes.
In the textbook: "The behavior of the" liberators from Bolshevism ", the atrocities and lawlessness they committed in the occupied territories, the inhuman attitude towards prisoners of war became another reason that prompted many who suffered from the Soviet regime during the revolution, collectivization, mass repressions to stand up for the Motherland."
From July to November 1941, the Germans released all the Belarusian and Ukrainian prisoners of war from the occupied territories to their homes - 318,770 people. A third of a million! Is this "inhuman treatment of prisoners of war"? And what to do with these prisoners of war, if there is nothing to feed their army of invaders of 3.5 million, to which almost the entire pre-war regular army of the Red Army surrendered in six months - 4 million out of 5.5? And why did you give up? Is this not a sign of a new round of the Civil War of the peoples of the USSR against the communists and Stalinism?
The Germans did not have enough of their own soldiers even to escort this endless ocean of surrendered soldiers of the valiant Red Army - they appointed as guards the equally valiant Cossacks from prisoners of war (Hitler recognized the descendants of the Goths in the Cossacks). History has never known such an absurdity: they themselves were taken prisoner, and they were escorting themselves. And the officialdom paints them as “heroes”. Although the Germans were not around, they could have just dispersed aimlessly. But they deliberately went prisoner. What did they want? That their consciousness was overshadowed? Also taboo.
But since this is a taboo, then the successes of the aggressor, who almost occupied Moscow, are also explained outside of historical realities. But how can you have about 24 thousand tanks (including KV and T-34) - and destroy them, lose to an enemy who has only 3.5 thousand tankettes and other scrap metal? It turns out that if the USSR made at least 100 thousand tanks, the result would be the same in the Holocaust of 1941? Alas, this is out of the question. For the tanks are controlled by people, but they went prisoner. Moreover, escorting themselves.
In the textbook: "the failure of the Nazis to drive a wedge between the peoples of the USSR."
This does not seem to be history, but a propaganda spell. The Nazis did not drive any "wedge between the peoples of the USSR". And they created SS divisions from the peoples of the USSR: two Russians (including the 18th SS Cossack Corps), two Latvian, Lithuanian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, etc. What is the "wedge" here? These fraternal "Soviet" SS divisions fought side by side against the Bolsheviks. In general, according to historians, more than a million citizens of the USSR fought on the side of the Nazis against the USSR - this is not counting just collaborators. An incredible shame. But shame on whom? Not Russia at all, but the Stalinist regime. And the war became a "test for lice" for this "talented manager".
THE MAIN THING
“A number of union republics, and after them the autonomies, adopted declarations of independence. Gorbachev's attempts to sign a new union treaty ended in failure, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991."
Why did they accept it? Is it because they were forcibly included in the Russian Empire and the USSR?
“As a result of Yeltsin's victory after the tragic events in Moscow in October 1993, a radical change in the political system took place in Russia. A phased constitutional reform was carried out, a republic was created in which the president received extensive powers. The end of the first period was the final liquidation of the system of Soviets inherited from the USSR and the adoption at the end of 1993 of the current Russian Constitution”.
What is this "system of Soviets"? There was no Soviet power in the USSR - as Lenin defined it in fantasies. There was only the power of the Bureaucracy from the Horde. There was only feudalism, and evolutionarily it should be replaced by the bourgeois system.
The textbook lacks the main thing: understanding the evolution of the development of society, its future. Schoolchildren absolutely do not get the idea - THE MAIN IDEA OF THE NATIONAL HISTORY - that the society of Russia (and the CIS countries) is evolving from the feudal stage to a bourgeois free society. Where at the head of everything is no longer the autocracy and the class of the Bureaucracy, but the Civil Society and the Citizen with his duties (duties - not rights!) To manage his State both at the municipal and state levels.
Well, in other aspects, the textbook does not hold water.
Russian publicist Irina Karatsuba wrote: “Only that we are always and in everything are right, there are some explanations for all the abominations of the Russian state, sometimes the most monstrous ones. For example, the phrase about the fact that the repressions of the 1930s were caused by the need to fight the fifth column is an absolutely monstrous explanation."
Indeed, the textbook presents all of Russian history as JUSTIFICATION. True, this avoids "slippery moments": for example, why did Ivan the Terrible drown all the Jews of the city in Dvina during the capture of Polotsk, and Alexei Mikhailovich Romanov ordered the massacre of three thousand Jews of Mogilev during the occupation of this city by the ON?
What justification can be found for this? Did the Moscow invaders save the Belarusians from the Jews? But then how do the Nazis differ from the Russian tsars?
In Russia's aggression against Belarus in 1654-1667, half of the population of our country was destroyed. Not a word about this in the textbook. And even if they did, they would present it as “a blessing for Belarusians”. Like, for your benefit and destroyed half of your population.
Such a textbook, perhaps, is intended as something political and ideological to prevent the collapse of the Russian Federation, but for the former colonies of the Russian Empire it is absolutely not suitable. He will not be accepted at home in the CIS countries, the Baltic states, Poland and Finland - the former lands of the Russian Empire. It absolutely contradicts even the concepts of the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. And you shouldn't even stutter about Poles, Ukrainians, Finns and Moldovans. But there are still Georgians, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, Tajiks, Uzbeks, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Turkmens - all in the past subjects of the Russian Empire. And everyone has their own version of their story. It would be naive to believe that it should coincide with the egocentric and imperial Moscow.
ALTERNATIVE
V. Putin expressed a wish: there should be no "ideological rubbish" in a single history textbook. But he immediately clarified that the textbook should cultivate patriotism, pride in Great Russia, instill in the consciousness the idea of its unity and indivisibility. However, all this is "ideological rubbish"! After all, the very basis of the textbook is false - the idea that Russia has always only “liberated” and “gave freedom” to someone. Only "freedom" from what? From their statehood and sovereignty?
But there is another option. Take Armenia, for example. Recently in the Russian Federation they celebrated with fanfare the alleged "1150 years of statehood", and on the territory of Armenia the first states existed even in the time of Jesus Christ. But this country believes that its statehood was born in 1991. Why can't they think in the same way in the Russian Federation?
Indeed: Lenin's government officially declared that the RSFSR is not the heir to tsarist Russia - neither in terms of debts, nor in terms of historical continuity. And in 1991 a bourgeois revolution took place, overthrowing the communist regime that had ruled for 70 years. It turns out that the authors of the textbook have no right to say that tsarist Russia and then the USSR are supposedly the previous “Russian statehood”. Why try to whitewash the collapsed regimes if the Russian Federation was created in 1991? Why make excuses for Stalin's GULAG and the tyranny of the tsars-despots, if the Russian people themselves overthrew the hated tsarism and then overthrew communism?
Isn't it more logical to declare that there is a New Russia, which has nothing to do with the USSR and tsarism? Vaughn in Germany clearly and simply said that Hitler's Reich had nothing to do with New Germany. And there is no need to make excuses to ourselves, putting ourselves in a stupid position: they say, we are not Hitlerites, but we are ashamed of Germany, and therefore, they say, the Fuhrer is an "experienced manager", and concentration camps are only "the cost of political decisions."
It seems to me that the very approach of the authors of the textbook, who, following Karamzin and not at all a historian Putin, began to write the history of the "Russian State", is wrong. Instead, it is necessary to write the history of autochthons - people, people. It is the people who create states, and not vice versa. And without the people, any rulers - zero without a wand.
But if you name the subject not “History of Russia”, but “History of the Russian people”, then by definition the textbook will be fundamentally different. Not the history of state power, but the history of an ethnos and then a political nation. For, as Kastus Kalinovsky said, not the people for the state, but the state for the people.
At the same time, I would like to emphasize: Karamzin clearly named his work “History of the Russian State”. And what story does a single textbook tell? Not even states, but a number of states: Kievan Rus, Horde, Muscovy, Russian Empire, USSR (for some reason not the RSFSR, as if the authors equate the USSR and the RSFSR), the Russian Federation. This is the history of the Bureaucracy class on the territory of the Russian Federation, and not the history of the people. It should be taught to civil servants, not to schoolchildren.
The textbook repeats: “in such and such a year we annexed such and such a country to Russia” (be it Finland, Tajikistan, Poland or Azerbaijan). So you can't write "attached". Military aggression was often behind this term - which is introduced to the student as "the norm of attitude towards other countries." But the main thing: the student then has a question - if they connected, then who disconnected and for what reasons? The imperial consciousness is brought up on such formulations. But why? Who needs this in the 21st century, when the annexation of someone else's territory means only a burden and responsibility for “those who have been tamed” (Exupery)?
But an honest textbook should explain to the student that Russia does not need Finland, Tajikistan, Poland or Azerbaijan. Their “annexation” created only huge problems and generally destroyed the Russian Empire. But this is not said there …
"Attached", "attached" … The textbook is simply replete with this. You can also add Japan to Moscow. It seems to be small on the map, but there is also 140 million. And then what "Russian" will remain in Russia? It is possible to "join" China and India - 2 billion people. And the main thing has not been said by historians: it was not Russia that "attached" something, but that ITSELF JOINED to something. It was not Rzeczpospolita that Russia “annexed” (THIS IS AN ILLUSION!), But Russia JOINED her and her Jews, who later made the Great October Revolution and shot the royal family. And without participation in the divisions of the Rzecz Pospolita, the Russian monarchy might have existed to this day.
You have to figure out with your head what you are “attaching” and what will happen if Russia today joins Israel, Sudan, Iraq and Iran. Tsarism and Stalin obviously did not understand this (Stalin and the head of the General Staff Zhukov formed half the first echelon of Soviet troops on the western border from recruits from the newly "acquired" Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, Romania, Lithuania - who did not even know Russian, for were not born in the USSR, not Komsomol members and not Timurov pioneers, they all fled in the very first days after June 22, 1941, which became a catalyst for panic and flight of the entire army). That is what has defined history - errors like this, caused by stupidity and hegemonism. But historians are also silent about this … Well, of course, because G. K. In his memoirs, Zhukov surprisingly "forgot" about his mistakes, "remembering and reflecting."
But what is the use of history if it has no memory of mistakes? What then to learn from? Only on slogans?
Wherever you look in this textbook, there are silences, then inventions. And it turns out that the schoolchild must study the real history from other books.
UNIFIED TEXTBOOK OF THE HISTORY OF CIS COUNTRIES
Is it possible to make a single history textbook for the CIS countries? Belarus, for example, had a common medieval history not with the CIS countries, not with Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, not with Tajikistan and Azerbaijan, but with Poland. And with Russia, the whole "common history" consists only in centuries of bloody wars and then in four anti-Russian uprisings - one for each generation in the 19th century. Belarus Kastus Kalinovsky and the Russian hanger Muravyov, who hanged him in our capital Vilna - this is our whole history with Russia. The Russians believe that Kalinovsky was correctly hanged, while the Belarusians do not agree with this. So what is the "common denominator" you can find here?
The most interesting thing is that Belarusians will not be able to create a common history textbook even with the Poles: although we lived with them for centuries in a single union state, we still have different views, for example, on the era of the Reformation. For us, the transition of GDL-Belarus to Protestantism is a blessing and a "Golden Age", and the Poles retrospectively see this as "negative" and tend to highlight as a "positive phenomenon" the activities of the Jesuits in GDL-Belarus, who put an end to our Reformation.
So this is - I pay attention! - our historical brothers are Poles. How should the Orthodox ideologists of Russia or the Muslims of Turkmenistan relate to our Protestant history? For them, this is generally a monstrous heresy. Even in the once Uniate Ukraine, both our Protestantism and our Catholicism are negatively assessed.
What generally unites the CIS countries to create a single history textbook? Common life in the USSR? But history does not begin in 1922. The common life in the Russian Empire also does not unite: Belarus and Poland fell into it together as a result of the Russian occupation, they stayed there for only 122 years, constantly organizing uprisings.
For centuries, there were only two states here: the ON and the Horde. The textbook of the Russian Federation examines history in the prism of the interests of the Horde and with an eye to the invented Eurasian Union. But why should Belarus and Ukraine, subjects of the ON, distort their past and evaluate it in the same Horde way? Both in the USSR and in the new textbook of the Russian Federation, the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania is presented in an absolutely negative form. As they say, "the winners write history." It turns out that the Horde won in the centuries-old confrontation between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Horde? Which one writes the story "for itself"?
So why do we - the descendants of the heroic and great state of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania "from sea to sea" - the alien history of the Horde? We should have our own history textbook for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the eastern neighbors should have their own history textbook for the Horde. And it is clear that they will contradict each other in everything, there can be nothing united in principle (this is the same as "a single textbook on the history of Israel and the Arab countries"). The only possible unified history textbook for the CIS countries is the one that concerns the period of the USSR. Here there are already few discrepancies in ideas. There is also experience: scientists from the Republic of Belarus and the Russian Federation have already created common monographs about the Great Patriotic War.
But here, too, there are problems: the new textbook of the Russian Federation provides assessments of recent events (after 1991), which - so to speak - do not quite coincide with the political attitudes in a number of CIS countries. For the countries of the Commonwealth are developing socially and politically along different paths, and the textbook imposes the Russian political model as an example. This is also a significant obstacle to the creation of a unified history textbook for the CIS countries, since history is everywhere an element of politics. In general, the sovereign status of the CIS countries presupposes that each must have its own sovereign history. For what, then, is considered sovereignty?
"Analytical newspaper" Secret Research ", No. 4